Danika reviews The Trouble with Emily Dickinson by Lyndsey D’Arcangelo

TheTroublewithEmilyDickinson

The Trouble with Emily Dickinson is a cute lesbian teen book with a few notable features. One is that the main character, JJ, has a lesbian best friend: Queenie. They are not into each other. They’re just super close. The other is that JJ’s love interest? Straight. Or is she?!

The point of view switches between Kendal and JJ (and Kyan, but we’ll get to that later). JJ is out, is on the basketball team, and is a poet (we’ll get to that later, too). She’s not exactly part of the in crowd, but she’s got friends and hobbies and pretty much has things figured out, except for a habit of always falling for straight girls. Kendal is a cheerleader. She is part of the in crowd, and she thought she had everything figured out until she got JJ as a tutor, teaching her Women’s Literature, and Emily Dickinson’s poetry in particular. Kendal realizes that the life she’s built around cheerleading, parties, and being popular may not be what she really wants for herself.

I think the highlights of The Trouble With Emily Dickinson are the characters and their relationships. JJ is relateable and well-rounded, and Kendal’s self-discovery is sympathetic, especially because it comes from a bit of a different place than most lesbian teen novels: it’s not really about what she is and always has been but has suppressed, but is instead about how she feels right now, and the kind of person she seeks to become. Their friendship/courtship is sweet, especially at the end. I also appreciated Mya the cheerleading captain’s portrayal later in the book. But Queenie really steals the show. Her parents are rich and she loathes them. She gets great grades without trying. She seduces girls, but doesn’t believe in commitment. She’s charming, especially in her interactions with JJ. They balance each other out, with Queenie being all bravado and cynicism, and JJ all stage fright and so sincere and optimistic it kind of hurts. At first I felt like Queenie was veering into just flat-out jerk territory, especially with her plan to disrupt her sister’s wedding by coming out in her speech, but she grows throughout the book.  The sequel focuses on her, so that definitely makes me want to pick it up.

I did have a few issues with the novel, however. The writing is mostly straightforward, nothing particularly noteworthy, though I did dislike a few things. One is that JJ has a bit of a drawn-out struggle with realizing that she likes Kendal. She’s out. She knows she’s gay. I refuse to believe she’d actually say out loud to herself “Why am I thinking about her?” A grey area is the poetry included. It’s absolutely believable as angsty high school poetry, but personally I didn’t find it particularly poignant, even for high school. JJ is described over and over as a writer and as talented, so I’m not sure if the poetry is supposed to be believable as high school poetry, or as genuinely moving poetry, but I wasn’t interested in them (and I still remember my high school poetry class and first year college poetry classes).

What most got to me, though, was the character of Kyan. His POV is shown a couple of times, and he just did not seem interesting or relevant enough to get that spot. Compared to the complex and interesting characters that comprise the rest of the novel (well, maybe not Christine), Kyan falls flat. He’s a jock/jerk type who gets what he wants, and stating in his first appearance in the novel that he has a “[l]ack of confidence, but he’d never admit that” just isn’t enough to humanize him. I thought his character was unnecessary to the story, especially as a POV character.

The Trouble with Emily Dickinson is a sweet teen lesbian love story, and I will definitely be reading the sequel, but I have a feeling that I will like The Education of Queenie McBride more than its predecessor.

Link Round Up: Jan 24-29

Sparks   TwoSeriousLadies   TheChildGarden

The Advocate posted Lesbian Author-Scholar Julia Penelope Dead at 71.

Autostraddle posted Queer Latina Punk Artist Cristy C. Road: The Interview and Happy Birthday, Virginia Woolf! I Love You A Lot.

Band of Thebes posted Stonewall Book Awards: YA Winner, Honor Titles.

Curve Magazine posted The 10 Most Underrated Lesbian Books.

Elisa posted LGBT Ebook and Print Releases, January 2013.

BeforetheRain   HowtoGetaGirlPregnant   DorothyAllison

Frivolous Views posted posted GCLS Author Guest Blog: KG MACGREGOR.

Over the Rainbow Books posted 2013 Over the Rainbow List: 84 LGBT Books for Adult Readers.

Queer Books Please posted

AllWeKnow   Makara   AlwaysYouEdina

“8 Worthy Successors to Alison Bechdel” was posted at Flavorwire.

An article on Lesbian Pulp Fiction was at For Books’ Sake (back in 2010, but I just found it).

Lisa Cohen, author of All We Know: Three Lives, was intereviewed at NPR.

Sarah Diemer and Jennifer Diemer posted The Next Big Thing Blog Hop: Jennifer Diemer on her novel WHITE and Mary A Through Z, a Free YA Short Story — Part of Project Unicorn (A Lesbian YA Extravaganza).

Kelli Killion posted a teaser for their upcoming novel Sydney and Clara.

Always You, Edina by V.G. Lee was reviewed at Polari Magazine.

Makara by Kristen Ringman was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Danika reviews Starting From Here by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

StartingFromHere

The last time I kissed Rachel Greenstein we lay in the bed of Scarlett, my Ford pickup, watching the sun sink beyond West Lake.

From this very first sentence, you can already tell this is not going to start on a happy note. Starting From Here follows Colby during a time of crisis in her life. Her mother died two years ago, her dad is away long-distance trucking six days of the week, she’s failing Chemistry (and maybe Algebra), and her almost-girlfriend just broke up with her. Rachel’s breakup with Colby brings all of her abandonment issues to the surface. When she finds a stray by the side of the road, she decides to take him in [minor spoilers, highlight to read] but in trying to coax the dog to her, he shies away and gets hit by a car. And then has to have a leg amputated. Did I mention this book starts off bleak? [end spoilers] Colby is very likeable. She is funny and kind most of the time, and has a close relationship with her (gay) best friend, Van. She socializes mostly in her school’s Rainbow Alliance, but underneath this is a nagging loneliness in coming home to an empty trailer.

I really sympathized with Colby, even when she wallows in her sadness or lashes out at people. She struggles between wanting to tell her dad that she needs him and at the same time tries to be strong for him, and because that’s what her mom asked her to do. She struggles to come out to him. She pours her love and attention into Mo, her new dog, and tries her best to manage the responsibility of a pet while working and going to school and raising herself. [mild spoilers] Even when she finds another relationship–which is oh-so-cute–she can’t help but see everything and everyone as a threat to herself. She begins to withdraw from her life, even the people who love her. [end spoilers] 

The book is easy to read, the characters are well-rounded and loveable, and the dog is so cute! Ah, I’m a sucker for a dog story. But it really is about a dark spot in Colby’s life, and even though it’s written with humor, it can be a little heart-wrenching at times. I’ll admit, I cried. A couple of times. Again, dog stories! They get me! [spoilers] Don’t worry, the dog doesn’t die. [end spoilers] I read Starting From Here in a day, hooked on Colby’s roller coaster of a story, cheering her on and chastising her in turn. Colby makes a lot of mistakes, but you can feel her pain coming off the page, so I couldn’t help forgiving her, especially as she takes responsibility for them. Buckle in for a lot of angst if you pick this one up, but I definitely think it’s worth it. (Especially if you’re a dog person!) Starting From Here is definitely now on my list of favorite teen lesbian books, and one I would happily recommend.

Danika reviews The Narrows by m. craig

The Narrows is a Fantasy novel, but it is not the typical medieval Europe-based Fantasy. It’s what one reviewer called a “down-to-earth fantasy”. The Narrows opens with a barista making espressos using a small dragon. It’s an industrialized Fantasy world, and takes place mostly in the Bicycle Narrows, a little hipster side street in the city, taken over by cyclists, coffee shops, and illegal home breweries. The city has all the comforts you’d associate with a modern city, but all the gadgets are run on magic dust, trapped fairies are used as street lamps, and dwarves work in the factories. (Oh, and they have a pet unicorn cat! Drangs!) There are also magicweavers–people who are able to perform magic, with or without a wand–and questers, who train in a Battle School and will travel the world to fulfill quests and fight battles, for the right price. It’s the world that really drew me into The Narrows. I loved the mix of modern elements with traditional fantasy elements, and I think it makes this book worth picking up in itself. Unfortunately, the world has a 50s America view of homosexuality, with the characters frequenting a lesbian bar, but facing a lot of external oppression, including religious sanctions against being gay. It leads to a lot of gay angst and self-loathing. Personally, I prefer Fantasy worlds where queerness isn’t an issue, but sadly we still need stories like this, because it’s still a reality for a lot of people.

For the most part, I enjoyed the characters in The Narrows as well. Sim is on the run from her old life as a servant to royalty, where she got in some deep trouble. She’s a little naive and confused about the big city and spends most of the novel struggling to find her own voice and opinions about the politics that everyone around her is convinced they already know the right answers about. Most of the novel I found Sim charming, and all the main characters–her roommates and boss, mostly–well-rounded and intriguing. [spoilers] I found her treatment of Wood at the end unnecessary and even cruel, however. [end spoilers]

Sim also starts to come to terms with her sexuality over the course of the novel, as she falls for another girl, Wood. Wood is an anarchist type, proposing a unilateral revolution. I found the beginning of their relationship, as Sim flirts without really knowing that she’s doing it, really cute. [spoilers] As I said, though, I wasn’t a fan of how it ended. It begins to look like even though Sim is in love with Wood, she doesn’t seem to actually like her as a person. And then she pulls a whole “Nice Guy” move and gets really angry at Wood just because she doesn’t feel the same way about her, even though she constantly talks about dating guys, so it’s not like she was being very misleading. [end spoilers]

The pacing of the plot was a little bit weird, however, until I realized that it is setting up for a sequel. As I said, at the beginning of the book, Sim is on the run from Nogron, the powerful royal leader. After that, Sim settles into the city and the Nogron plot isn’t explicitly picked up again until near the end of the book. When I was reading it as a stand-alone novel, that seemed weird, but knowing that it’s the first part in a series, it makes a lot more sense. The middle of the book is mostly exposition and establishing the world. The Bike Narrows that Sim hangs around in is filled with hippies, queers, and fuck-the-system revolutionaries, including her love interest as well as her boss. One of the problems is in magic pollution, a metaphor that I thought got a little heavy handed at times (it’s inconclusive that magic dust use causes more lighting, but only because the three magicweavers that disagree are in Nogron’s pocket). They also talk about the prejudice against dwarves as racism. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice any people of colour mentioned in The Narrows, which I think is especially sad if you’re going for a political, oppression-based plot. One character does once mention the “White men ruling”, but that’s the only mention of race I noticed. [spoilers] Also, I couldn’t believe that in the end, they forgot about the dwarves! If you’re fighting against oppression, you should remember the existence of oppressed people, especially if you’re blowing up the buildings they work in!! [end spoilers]

The book itself is beautiful. I love the cover, and the texture of it. It’s especially impressive from such a small press. Unfortunately, I did notice some homonym typos that took me out of the story. One is that “breaks” is used instead of “brakes” through the whole book, as well as “loose” for “lose” (a personal pet peeve of mine).

Even though I had some issues with the book, overall I really enjoyed it. The world is so interesting and different from what I’m used to in Fantasy novels, and that really kept me hooked. I am excited for the sequel, which seems to be set up to be the more action-packed book after The Narrows set up the back story and established how the world works.

Check out Jill’s review of The Narrows, too!

Danika reviews Hymnal for Dirty Girls by Rebekah Matthews

HymnalforDirtyGirls

This a slim (only 40 pages) collection of 6 short stories, making it a little bit hard for me to know how to review thoroughly. From the first couple sentences, I hooked on Matthews’s style. (From “Bedroom”: “Someone keeps leaving used condoms outside my apartment. When I complain about it, you say maybe it’s just the same condom I’m seeing again and again, and I say no it’s not the same condom because it shows up in different colors–yellowish, or white, or completely translucent. Once it was green.”) The tone is casual, and has almost sarcastic humor to it. The characters have varying degrees of lesbianism (yes, I’m using that as an adjective), and the stories all connect to this theme of “dirtiness”: all the characters are in places where they feel some degree of disgust with their own lives.

Each story is what my partner likes to call a “window” story: a quick peek at someone’s life, a scene that you came into partway through and leave before there’s any neat conclusion. Each story was intriguing, but I didn’t really feel satisfied when I got to the end of each story. I don’t think it’s a problem with the stories themselves, just that they all deal with a time where the main character is unsatisfied and they all have that film of “dirtiness” (in a physical, spiritual, and holistic sense) to them, which makes it difficult to keep leaving characters there, especially since I found them so sympathetic. The last story has a particularly off-putting ending.

I think that is perhaps an aim of the collection, though. The stories explore this concept of being “dirty”, which is especially relevant to the queer characters (because we live in a world that can still associate queer with “dirty”), and it makes total sense to emerge from that feeling uncomfortable. I felt the writing was very strong in this collection: I especially liked the second person narrative in two of the stories. It sort of reminds me of one of my favorite (sadly, non-queer) books, a short story collection called Small Crimes In an Age of Abundance by Matthew Kneale. Just like this book, the stories left me not exactly happy, but definitely in approval of the author. And just like I sought out Kneale’s novel soon after reading his stories (also great, also non-queer), I hope to see a novel from Rebekah Matthews soon! If you’re a fan of short stories and books that unsettle, I recommend this one.

Danika reviews Before the Rain: A Memoir of Love & Revolution by Luisita Lopez Torregrosa

BeforetheRain

Before the Rain is a beautifully-written memoir that is just what the subtitle promises: about love and revolution. It focuses equally on Torregrosa’s experiences as a newspaper editor and reporter overseas in the 80s, as well as her almost a decade long love affair with a woman named Elizabeth. From the beginning, their relationship comes across as passionate and compelling, but with a note of inevitable tragedy. At times it reminded me of a lesbian pulp in the dramatics and emotion, though it was completely believable. I was also reminded of Jeanne Cordova’s memoir When We Were Outlaws. Both balance an intense and often destructive relationship with high-stakes politics. Cordova’s activism takes place in the US, however, while Torregrosa covers political climates in several countries, mostly the Philippines. (Both are also memoirs written by Latina women, coincidentally.)

Place definitely takes a central role in this book. Torregrosa and Elizabeth travel a lot as foreign reporters, and each place has a huge impact on their relationship. They spend most of their time in Manila in the Philippines. Torregrosa has a skill with establishing mood and setting with small details, and Manila is established as a significant character in the story. This, plus the segment of the book that takes place during monsoon season, reminded me of Miss Timmins’ School for Girls (despite that being a novel). Elizabeth and Torregrosa feel stifled in big cities, feeling much more free and real where the poverty and revolution of Manila was at their front doorstep. In some ways I felt as if they were romanticizing the poverty and upheaval described, however, because Torregrosa and Elizabeth both have lives that partly consist of hanging out by the pool and going to cocktail parties. Manila may have seemed more real to them, but they were also sheltered from the negative aspects, even when they were reporting on it. But there’s a romance to travel in general in the book, as well as in writing.

As a warning, this isn’t a narrative that really feels like there have been major changes from the beginning to the end. It’s not so much a linear “plot”-driven memoir, but more like a long meditation on a relationship. It’s like Before the Rain starts with the question that most break-ups come to, “What went wrong?” but wrote out the entire story, not just a rough sketch. In the beginning, I found Torregrosa much more sympathetic in their relationship. She seemed passionate, though sometimes explosive, versus Elizabeth’s coldness. Elizabeth came across as secretive, moody, and distant. As the story progressed, however, Torregrosa’s passion seemed to manifest more into rages and moods, and I began to find myself sympathizing more with Elizabeth.

From the beginning, their relationship seems fraught, and there never seems to be a way that it could end well. By the end (spoilers?), though the relationship ends in the mid-90s and this book was published in 2012, the author doesn’t seem to have distanced herself from it. She describes still imagining Elizabeth there with her, and I got the general sense of only a short period of time passing, maybe a year, not more than a decade. (But she does describe Elizabeth not fully leaving her life, so I suppose that explains it.)

The strength of this book is in the lyrical writing, and its ability to establish place and mood in a nuanced, compelling way. If you are okay with a memoir that is more of a contemplation of a passionate, deeply flawed relationship than it is a progression from point a to point b, I highly recommend this one.

Link Round Up: January 15-24

HerselfWhenShesMissing   InOurMothersHouse   WomenTogetherWomenApart

AfterEllen posted 2012: The Year in Lesbian/Bi Books back in December, but I missed it until now!

Autostraddle posted Utah School District Returns Controversial Lesbian Family Book To Shelves (also discussed at Huffington Post) and Liberty Lit #12: I Owe Everything To Being Queer.

Lambda Literary posted Lambda Literary Goes to the Movies: Filmmakers’ Favorite Books and Honors, Awards, and Nominations for LGBT Writers.

Queerest. Library. Ever. posted Archives: David Lourea and the Bisexual Center.

Sista Outsider posted “Odd Girls” and Black Lesbians, on Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers‘s apologism for racism.

Women and Words posted Hot off the Press/Coming Attractions! (New lesbian fiction!) and Mark Your Calendars!

Machine MakaMaka ThePyramidWaltz

“Reaching into the QUILTBAG: The Evolving World of Queer Speculative Fiction” was posted at Apex Publications.

“List of yuri manga that isn’t about schoolgirls” was posted by mizuno_youko, with links to scanlations.

“Sleeps With Monsters: Lesbian SFF Romance” was posted at Tor.com.

“Out of the Closet & Onto the Page” was posted at Huffington Post.

ArtificialHearts   Rymellan   ProjectUnicorn1

R. E. Bradshaw posted Steamy Bedroom Windows: Lesbian Fiction and Erotica.

Sarah Diemer posted

Sarah Ettritch posted Gay and Lesbian Sucks, on the limits of “Gay and Lesbian” as a genre category.

Silver Moon by Lundoff   Timmins   TierradelFuegoPartingShots

KB/KT Grant posted

Malinda Lo posted On agendas, social issues and real-life awkwardness.

Marbles14 15

Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, + Me by Ellen Forney was reviewed at Lindy Reads and Reviews.

Something in the Wine by Jae was reviewed at C-Spot Reviews.

The Retribution and The Vanishing Point by Val McDermid was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Queer Cinema: Schoolgirls, Vampires and Gay Cowboys by Barbara Mennel was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Art on Fire by Hilary Sloin was reviewed at Out In Print Reviews.

Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family and Identity by Candace Walsh was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

As always, check out even more links at the Lesbrary’s twitter, tumblr, and Facebook pages!

Kristi reviews Riot Girl by Louise Davis

RiotGirl

Alecia passes the time by waitressing during the day, but at night she works hard trying to get her band to the right place. When Sam, the owner of the hot 55 Bar, walks into her restaurant, Alecia takes a chance that Sam might be interested. Which she is–and not just in the music. As Sam and Alecia begin a complicated song and dance around each other, Alecia’s relationship with the sweet Toni begins to move in the right direction. With two hot women and an open door to her music dream, can Alecia keep everything from falling down around her?

Riot Girl is a short book, coming in at around 150 pages. However it is packed with sensual sex scenes and angst-ridden relationship-building between Alecia and her two lovers. Alecia seems to have it all balanced somehow, but this triangle has more angles than you would expect. Unfortunately, the largest twist was discoverable by the middle of the story, which led to me rushing through some of the last chapters to see if I was right. Which I was.

The biggest issue I had with this book was with some of the type changes and links within the ebook. While one benefit of digital books can be external links that lead you to information that the reader may not know–such as actual musicians–there were sections of text that seemed to be links but were not, which popped me out of the story. (Note that this may be an advanced copy, but I am unsure.)

All in all, Riot Girl is a fun escape into the world of the struggling musician, one who discovers love along the way with not one, but two women. Whether that can lead to a happy ending, you will just have to read it yourself to discover.

Danika reviews Gay Lives edited by Robert Aldrich

I’ve got to say, as far as first impressions go: this is a beautiful book. It has a gorgeous, soft-to-the-touch dustjacket and tons of high quality photos throughout and thick pages… ah. Sorry, book geeking.

As far as the actual contents, Gay Lives is a collection of short biographies of gay men and women throughout history. I don’t want to get into the argument of calling people “gay” when the term didn’t really exist yet, because they address it, and honestly I find that conversation kind of boring. Gay Lives attempts to cover a large span of time (as in, most of recorded time) and show a global history of gay lives. The biographies themselves are fairly short and succinct, well-written, and interesting. They range from well-known figures (Sappho, Harvey Milk, etc) to more obscure historical figures. They also attempt to show a variety of professions throughout the book.

And this is my main complaint towards Gay Lives: I don’t feel like it was successful in its attempts at diversity. Every time I read a book that claims to be “gay and lesbian” or “LGBT” or some variety, I like to keep track of the content that actual represents each of those categories. In the case of this book, by my count, the number of gay male biographies to lesbian biographies was more than 3:1, and getting close to 4:1. And despite this book containing biographies from a larger range of countries than these sort of collections usually have, the vast majority of the people featured were European. And again, although there are samplings of different professions, the majority of people included are artists (photographers, painters, writers, etc).

I feel a little divided, because this collection does show that they clearly trying to make a more inclusive collection, but having one biography try to sum up all of Africa’s history with homosexuality (or one explaining all of China’s, and one for all of South America’s–Japan gets a chapter) doesn’t quite work. I understand that it is a lot harder to find historical records on lesbians and non-Western queer people, but because the introduction stated that “a particular effort has been made to embrace lives from outside Europe”, I found it to disappointing that the majority of the people featured were Europeans. Often even the more “international” biographies are about Europeans living abroad.

I also didn’t really connect to the structure of this collection. Biographies are roughly grouped by categories, starting off mostly chronologically, then a chapter on women (yes, a contained chapter… sigh), and then chapters on “Visions of Male Beauty”, “Diverse Callings”, “International Lives in the Modern Era”, etc. It didn’t really provide a thread throughout the book. I would have preferred to either see them arranged chronologically or by location.

So on the one hand, this is a beautiful book, well-written, with interesting stories, and admittedly a broader range of subjects than most collections of its kind. On the other hand, I don’t think it exactly lives up to its introduction, and felt a little scattered. I would recommend this if you’re interested in gay male European biographies, but if you’re just in it for the lesbian biographies, I would look for another collection.